On March 17 Trump issued a new executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” And its goal is largely to prevent the dissemination of divisive or negative views of American history, instantiated, for Trump, in the Smithsonian Institution’s new exhibit on sculpture and identity. Here’s the “purpose” of the EO:
Purpose and Policy. Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed. Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe.
The EO then concentrates on a new exhibit at the Smithsonian that deals with race and power:
Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive. For example, the Smithsonian American Art Museum today features “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” an exhibit representing that “[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” The exhibit further claims that “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism” and promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating “Race is a human invention.”
Other institutes also get this kind of treatment, including The National Museum of African American History and Culture and Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Order then decrees that the Department of the Interior must prevent such “divisive” exhibits. Part of Trump’s Diktat to the Department of the Interior telling it what it must do:
(i) determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology;
(ii) take action to reinstate the pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties, as appropriate and consistent with 43 U.S.C. 1451 et seq., 54 U.S.C. 100101 et seq.,and other applicable law; and
(iii) take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.\
It’s clear that Trump is aiming for a somewhat sanitized version of American history, closer to that of the old sanitized history textbooks we had in junior high and far, far distant from the claims of the 1619 Project. Of course the truth is somewhere in between: America and its founders had high and admirable ideals, but fell down when it came to the “all men are created equal” with the same “unalienable rights” part. All people (not just “men,” which to them presumably meant “people”) were not treated as if they were created equal, and the institution of slavery led to the worst war in American history (the Civil War killed 1.5 times the number of Americans who died in WWII and more than ten times the number of American deaths in the Vietnam War).
And bigotry did not end after the Civil War, of course. Immigrants were largely denied opportunities, blacks still faced Jim Crow treatment, and we incarcerated American citizens of Japanese descent during WWII. Our history, while progressing now towards equality of opportunity, has been checkered, and it’s wrong to hide that from people.
On the other hand, it’s misleading to pretend, as woke culture does courtesy of Ibram Kendi et al., that racism is still built heavily into American laws and that all white Americans are bigots determined to hold down minorities. Yes, identity politics is distorting America, but the remnants of the past nevertheless can be seen in the lower well-being and achievement of some minorities, and we need to remedy that as best we can.
In contrast, Trump seems to want to hide America’s past under a basket. I haven’t seen the Smithsonian’s exhibit so I can’t pass judgement on it, but the NYT, highlighting Trump’s order, takes another tack: it addresses, and pretty much denies, the existence of human race. Read the article by clicking the headline below or find it archived here.
The tenor of this article, which is poorly researched but laden with quotes, is that human races do not exist and are merely a social construct. A few excerpts to that end:
The president’s order noted, among other things, that the show “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating ‘Race is a human invention.’”
In interviews, several scholars questioned why the executive order appeared to take issue with that view, which is now broadly held. Samuel J. Redman, a history professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst who has written about scientific racism, said that “the executive order is troubling and out of step with the current consensus.” He added that pseudoscientific attempts to create a hierarchy of races with white people at the top were seen “in places like Nazi Germany or within the eugenics movement.”
and
“Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation,” the statement reads. “Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination.”
“It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination,” the statement says. “Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.”
This is the view throughout the article, and it’s both right and wrong, which means it’s misleading. The “classical” view, which is that there are a finite number of distinct groups, distinguishable by morphology and with few or no intermediates between groups, is wrong. Thousands of years ago, when human populations began differentiating in geographical isolation from one another, and were was on the road to formation of distinct biological “races” and then species, this definition may have be closer to accuracy. But human mobility and interbreeding had long since effaced the distinctness of populations. We have groups within groups within groups.
But populations that are genetically distinct continue to exist, and that is what the article neglects. You can call them “races” or “populations” (my preference) or “ethnic groups”, but there’s no doubt that the human species is geographically heterogeneous, with geographic barriers like the Sahara or the Himalayas demarcating the more distinct populations. Further, you can often identify people’s ancestry from their genes. Otherwise, companies like 23andMe wouldn’t work at all.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Writing about “race” these days is a hot potato because even discussing it implies that you are ranking populations, which no rational person does any more. But ignoring the genetic distinctness of populations, based on frequency differences in many genes among populations from different areas, affords a fascinating and informative look into the history of human migration, selection, and so on.
There are few sensible pieces written on the topic of race. Most of them argue that race is a social construct without any biological basis. But I want to be a bit self-aggrandizing and recommend one section of the paper “The ideological subversion of biology” that Luana Maroja and I wrote for the Skeptical Inquirer. It’s free at the title link. The paper takes up six ways that evolutionary biology has been distorted by ideologues. The part you should read is section 5, which starts like this (it is not long but I urge it upon you):
5. “Race and ethnicity are social constructs, without scientific or biological meaning.” This is the elephant in the room: the claim that there is no empirical value in studying differences between races, ethnic groups, or populations. Such work is the biggest taboo in biology, claimed to be inherently racist and harmful. But the assertion heading this paragraph, a direct quote from the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association, is wrong.
and a few excerpts from that section (there are references to all statements):
. . .old racial designations such as white, black, and Asian came with the erroneous view that races are easily distinguished by a few traits, are geographically delimited, and have substantial genetic differences. In fact, the human species today comprises geographically continuous groups that have only small to modest differences in the frequencies of genetic variants, and there are groups within groups: potentially an unlimited number of “races.” Still, human populations do show genetic differences from place to place, and those small differences, summed over thousands of genes, add up to substantial and often diagnostic differences between populations.
Even the old and outmoded view of race is not devoid of biological meaning. A group of researchers compared a broad sample of genes in over 3,600 individuals who self-identified as either African American, white, East Asian, or Hispanic. DNA analysis showed that these groups fell into genetic clusters, and there was a 99.84 percent match between which cluster someone fell into and their self-designated racial classification. This surely shows that even the old concept of race is not “without biological meaning.” But that’s not surprising because, given restricted movement in the past, human populations evolved largely in geographic isolation from one another—apart from “Hispanic,” a recently admixed population never considered a race. As any evolutionary biologist knows, geographically isolated populations become genetically differentiated over time, and this is why we can use genes to make good guesses about where populations come from.
More recent work, taking advantage of our ability to easily sequence whole genomes, confirms a high concordance between self-identified race and genetic groupings. One study of twenty-three ethnic groups found that they fell into seven broad “race/ethnicity” clusters, each associated with a different area of the world. On a finer scale, genetic analysis of Europeans show that, remarkably, a map of their genetic constitutions coincides almost perfectly with the map of Europe itself. In fact, the DNA of most Europeans can narrow down their birthplace to within roughly 500 miles.
One more:
On a broader scale, genetic analysis of worldwide populations has allowed us to not only trace the history of human expansions out of Africa (there were several), but to assign dates to when H. sapiens colonized different areas of the world. This has been made easier with recent techniques for sequencing human “fossil DNA.” On top of that, we have fossil DNA from groups such as Denisovans and Neanderthals, which, in conjunction with modern data, tells us these now-extinct groups bred in the past with the ancestors of “modern” Homo sapiens, producing at least some fertile offspring (most of us have some Neanderthal DNA in our genomes). Although archaeology and carbon dating have helped reconstruct the history of our species, these have largely been supplanted by sequencing the DNA of living and ancient humans.
We go on to discuss the taboos of race (the most taboo-sh being studying differences in mentation and IQ among groups) as well as some of the advantages of knowing the genetic differences among human populations.
The point I want to make is that, when you’re talking about “race,” you don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, the classical idea of “races” is largely wrong, but we should not pretend that all human populations are genetically identical, or that the existing genetic differences aren’t diagnostic or of interest. The NYT article above, however, says nothing like that. Instead, it emphasizes the viewpoint expressed above:
“Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation,” the statement reads. “Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination.”
“It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination,”
You can see how this is misleading. Populations are not absolutely distinct, but are distinguishable genetically if you use many genes. And populations do tend to statistically cluster by geography, because geographic isolation promotes genetic differentiation. (Again, this is how ancestry companies figure out where your genes came from.) And yes, of course, “race” was used to prop up colonialism, oppression, and discrimination”. That’s the bathwater we should throw out. But we should keep the baby, which is recognizing that human populations are not genetically identical, and that the genetic differences among them give useful information about several topics. Just read section 5!
Great post.
Indeed, “race” is important along many dimensions to understand life, and I noticed it in particular reading Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington (1901). “Race” was how everyone navigated their day back then, and in an acute sense. Old literature will not make sense in modern lights, but is important nonetheless.
Here’s a great excerpt I share to encourage readers to give this gem of American writing a look :
“From any point of view, I had rather be what I am, a member of the Negro race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of any other race. I have always been made sad when I have heard members of any race claiming rights or privileges, or certain badges of distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or attainments. I have been made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth, and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race will not finally hold an individual back if he possesses intrinsic, individual merit. Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is, in the long run, recognized and rewarded. This I have said here, not to call attention to myself as an individual, but to the race to which I am proud.”
Booker T. Washington
Up From Slavery
1901
Bravo. I hope the historical perspectives that result from this Executive Order will feature the wisdom of great Americans like Booker T. Washington. And, if they deal with race, scientific truths like those discussed by Dr. Coyne. For a few decades, relegating historical displays and public policies based on critical race and Jim Crow ideologies to museum basements might foster the healthiest civic future for the country that this administration can advance.
I think that you and I are both of Ashkanazi Jewish heritage, and hence subject to all kinds of genetic problems (far from imaginary)
Chris,
I don’t have any medical issues of any sort, so I think I escaped my genetic damnation (yes, I’m 98% Ashkenazi Jew).
I don’t have those issues, but other members of my family carry the BRACA gene (I think they got it through the man who married my aunt). Not good.
An interesting perspective:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/02/trump-art-corrosive-smithsonian-executive-order/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzQzNTY2NDAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzQ0OTQ4Nzk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NDM1NjY0MDAsImp0aSI6IjIxNzI4NGNlLWMwM2UtNGEwZC04MzM2LWRlZjdjYjcwZWQzOSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9vcGluaW9ucy8yMDI1LzA0LzAyL3RydW1wLWFydC1jb3Jyb3NpdmUtc21pdGhzb25pYW4tZXhlY3V0aXZlLW9yZGVyLyJ9.A1nX6wgzDD-QgFyoWv9N13yumxl4eCkc6q9YlYfy_v0
I just read the piece by Zachary Small. The word that comes to mind is “superficial.”
Yes, racial variation is but a small part of human genetic variation. But geographical variation is recognizable and correlates with racial differences. Perhaps the word “race” is a human invention, but geographical variation is real.
“But geographical variation is recognizable and correlates with racial differences.”
That might depend upon history, and who’s talking. People from Greece and Italy were once not considered “White” by Americans from northern Europe. The racial category “Black” is pretty much limited to “African” and “African-Americans” in the U.S., but in other countries can include people from India and Melanesia, for example. There have been at least two books published on the history of Jews becoming “White.”
The problem seems to stem in part from a confusion between the “ordinary language” use of “race” and the scientific/biological use of “race.”
I think scientific organizations and individuals could formulate statements that clearly explain the distinction between group and individual differences. We use scientific language to describe the genetic differences between groups that correlate with physiological differences we can observe. But we also need to point out that INDIVIDUAL differences within genetic groups are what matters in social and political understanding.
Even if group differences are statistically valid, individuals must not be treated differently on that basis.
Part of the problem is lay people using scientific language to justify ideology. Instead of acknowledging the statistical facts, they deny their validity in favor of a political narrative. But this is partly a result of scientists not emphasizing the idea that science should not be the sole determinate of public policy.
In the case of IQ or Sex, biology is misused by bigots to justify public policy aimed at groups. Scientists have a responsibility to maintain the accuracy of scientific language and it’s wrong for science organizations to distort that for ideological reasons. But it’s also important to explain the limits of how science can be applied to public policy.
What’s so difficult about explaining that there are two types of gametes but as many forms of sexual expression as there are individuals? Or that IQ can be a useful measure of cognition but not a valid measure of an individual’s ability to successfully adapt to their environment.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. Our article discussed the historical and potential medical advances (and other benefits) of recognizing GROUP differences, which of course are difference on average. So no, you’re wrong in sahying that only “INDIVIDUAl differences are what matters in social or political understanding.” Already you are taking issue with attempts to help GROUPS (i.e. minorities) that have suffered from bigotry in the past. Presumably, then, you reject all efforts to help individuals based on what population group that they belong to.
As for IQ and bigotry, nobody here is discussing that. Seriously, I don’t know if you are just saying what you believe or saying something relevant to the post I put up. And as for the gamete stuff, I don’t see its relevance to the discussion at all.
I suppose I’m both responding to the specific article and the more general questions about using accurate scientific language for science, and misusing it for political or ideological purposes. There is an ongoing discussion here about the biological definition of sex and it’s use by political and ideological actors to justify policies. I totally agree with you that ideology should not distort science. I also believe that scientists should be clear about the limitations of science to make policy.
So, the “gamete stuff” relates to the disconnect between the scientific fact that there are two distinct categories of reproductive cells, and the larger question of biological determinants of sexual expression. To be more specific, I don’t see the relevance between gamete type and an individual’s sense of sexual attraction or expression. It’s a vast oversimplification.
But this seems to be a major point of contention and it distracts from the question of whether government should regulate personal identity. It’s really religious beliefs that motivate people to want to regulate other’s sexual identity and I don’t like science being misused to justify that. My mention of IQ is just another example of the way data can be misused for ideology. My academic background is in cognitive psychology so it’s a particular sore point for me.
And, of course, I don’t object to group differences being considered in medical research or treatment. But they shouldn’t obscure the individual differences that make each case unique. Medical science is moving toward individualized treatment based on specific genetic information. Using group differences is a temporary, less accurate, approach towards that end.
.
I’m not trying to be provocative, just broaden the discussion about the responsibility of scientists to prevent the misuse of data in support of any ideology.
Mark I get what you’re trying to say, but that’s not the conversation people are having here about genderism. Gamete type defines the two sexes, and sex is both a social and a legal category. The “gamete stuff” is an effort by “trans” people to replace those categories with some nebulous idea called gender.
No government (at least not in Canada) is regulating personal identity – people who have a delusion about their sex can and should dress and talk and present as they like. And no science is being used to justify suppression of that personal expression. Just the opposite: check out all the floats sponsored by government and political orgs in any local Pride parade.
Many of us here think government should regulate access to spaces for females, and should prevent males who have a “personal identity” as a woman from accessing female sport, prisons, washrooms, medical services, etc.
A gender delusion isn’t a passport into sex-segregated spaces and services, other people shouldn’t be forced to participate in that delusion (cf. pronouns), women don’t have to be human shields for the delicate sensibilities of men with gender delusions, and kids certainly shouldn’t be persuaded that they were “born in the wrong body” or will kill themselves if they don’t medically switch into the “right” body. That’s what the “gamete stuff” is all about.
I object to people misusing science to explain their personal identity. No disagreement there. I also think this is the case where science is used to categorize personal identity. Trans people are not a different sex and shouldn’t assert that. But it’s not science to categorize personal identity as a “delusion” because it doesn’t match a scientific data point. I use the term “personal identity” rather than gender because of the semantic confusion.
Perhaps less so in Canada, but governments continue attempts to stigmatize and regulate personal identity for largely religious reasons. Where I live, Drag performances are highly controversial and local governments try to outlaw them. They often use the scientific definition of sex to justify it.
Just for clarity, I’m a straight male with no personal attachment to these issues. I value scientific accuracy and object to misusing science for ideological or political purposes. Referring to personal identity as a delusion is no more accurate than referring to biological sex as a social construct.
At the risk of overcommenting…
“Referring to personal identity as a delusion is no more accurate than referring to biological sex as a social construct.”
I think that’s a false equivalence. Sex is not a social construct because it’s defined by an easily observable biological trait (gamete type). But a male who believes he is female has a delusion about himself because he’s not female. As many have observed, this is similar in many ways to the anorexic person who believes he is obese.
What else other than a delusion could explain such a belief? He can’t have a female soul because souls don’t exist; he also can’t have a female brain because the brain develops alongside the rest of the sexed body; and he can’t have an internal sense of being a woman (whatever that means in his particular culture) because he’s never experienced being female.
This is all accurate. People like me who criticize genderism are not trying to regulate identity or expression (delusional or not). But we are willing to regulate actions when they erode the sex-based rights of females. The fact that religious bigots seize on these observations to justify wholesale discrimination against “trans” people (for the record I’m opposed to such discrimination too) is not an argument against the truth of the observations (about delusion, souls, sex-based rights and spaces).
We are destined to cycle between the 1619 Project and Donald Trump. Never the more complex middle ground.
How discouraging.
Stupid exaggerated sensitivities about all matters pertaining to race often have bad consequences for science and medicine. I had a friend at U. Chicago who was a geneticist and a medical researcher. He had applied for grants to study the strange immunity to certain kinds of cancer that we observe in certain Native American populations, notably Indians of the American southwest such as Pueblo, Hopi, Zuni etc. The theory is that these populations have strong resistance to developing certain kinds of cancer for genetic reasons. If that is so and scientists could figure out why, the knowledge could be hugely useful and could benefit everybody of every race. The organizations that turned down his research proposals did not scientifically disagree with his ideas, but overtly expressed queasiness about these suggestions of genetic differences among peoples.
Sam Harris discussed the issue of Neanderthal genes. It turns out that Africans have very few clearly Neanderthal genes and European whites have much more. Harris points out that if the facts had been the opposite, all research on Neanderthal genes would have ground to a halt. Scientists who wished to study Neanderthal genes would have been accused of pseudoscientific racism.
That the differences are mostly the result of past mistreatment is often assumed, but the evidence against this idea is getting strong. Today’s college-age black Americans are now the second generation for whom actual racism has declined to pretty low levels (while discrimination in their favour has been pronounced).
If gaps in things like crime rates and educational achievement were now reducing to low levels then the “remnants of the past” idea would be tenable, but these gaps are not closing.
One also needs to consider mechanisms. The go-to explanation is “poverty”. But it’s very easy to control for family socio-economic status, and that does nothing to explain gaps between groups in crime rates and educational achievement — which are just as strong when cohorts are matched for SES.
It’s worth pointing out that the mainstream scientific account of “classical” races, as originally developed by people like Johann Blumenbach and subsequent scientists, was largely right.
That is, from the start, they were fully aware that races are not discrete and are clinal rather than sharp-edged. (I wrote a piece for Quillette about Blumenbach, showing that he understood this full well.)
The idea that races are only “real” if they are discrete and sharp-edged seems to be mostly an idea schemed up recently in order to then declare races “not biologically real”.
Of course, race isn’t real. You know what other things aren’t real? Air and gravity (more examples exist) don’t exist. Where does the Earth’s atmosphere end? Where is the distinct line between ‘air’ and ‘no air’ (outer space)? Where does the influence of Earth’s gravity end? Where is the distinct line? Don’t get me started on climate (another thing that does not exist).
Any answer to the question of whether human races exist presupposes an answer to the question of what human races are or would be. Given his statements, Professor Coyne’s position is racial population naturalism:
“The third school of thought regarding the ontology of race is racial population naturalism. This camp suggests that, although racial naturalism falsely attributed cultural, mental, and physical characters to discrete racial groups, it is possible that genetically significant biological groupings could exist that would merit the term races. Importantly, these biological racial groupings would not be essentialist or discrete: there is no set of genetic or other biological traits that all and only all members of a racial group share that would then provide a natural biological boundary between racial groups. Thus, these thinkers confirm the strong scientific consensus that discrete, essentialist races do not exist. However, the criteria of discreteness and essentialism would also invalidate distinctions between non-human species, such as lions and tigers. As Philip Kitcher puts it, “there is no…genetic feature…that separates one species of mosquito or mushroom from another” (Kitcher 2007, 294–6; Cf. Mallon 2007, 146–168). Rather, biological species are differentiated by reproductive isolation, which is relative, not absolute (since hybrids sometimes appear in nature); which may have non-genetic causes (e.g., geographic separation and incompatible reproduction periods or rituals); which may generate statistically significant if not uniform genetic differences; and which may express distinct phenotypes. In effect, if the failure to satisfy the condition of discreteness and essentialism requires jettisoning the concept of race, then it also requires jettisoning the concept of biological species. But because the biological species concept remains epistemologically useful, some biologists and philosophers use it to defend a racial ontology that is “biologically informed but non-essentialist,” one that is vague, non-discrete, and related to genetics, genealogy, geography, and phenotype (Sesardic 2010, 146).
There are three versions of racial population naturalism: cladistic race; socially isolated race; and genetically clustered race. Cladistic races are “ancestor-descendant sequences of breeding populations that share a common origin” (Andreasen 2004, 425). They emerged during human evolution, as different groups of humans became geographically isolated from each other, and may be dying out, if they have not already, due to more recent human reproductive intermingling (Andreasen 1998, 214–6; Cf. Andreasen 2000, S653–S666). Socially isolated race refers to the fact that legal sanctions against miscegenation might have created a genetically isolated African American race in the USA (Kitcher 1999). Finally, defenders of genetically clustered race argue that although only 7% of the differences between any two individuals regarding any one specific gene can be attributed to their membership in one of the commonly recognized racial categories, the aggregation of several genes is statistically related to a small number of racial categories associated with major geographic regions and phenotypes (Sesardic 2010; Kitcher 2007, 304).”
Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/
” …if the failure to satisfy the condition of discreteness and essentialism requires jettisoning the concept of race, then it also requires jettisoning the concept of biological species.” Absolutely! We in Critical Postmodern Life Studies have long contended that species are on a spectrum; and also that anyone assigned to a given species at birth should be free to identify with another, and be treated accordingly. Personally, I identify as a coatimundi, except on weekends, when I am a rhododendron.
Regarding the Smithsonian Institute anyone remember the deplorable white culture poster. Perhaps this was the pinnacle of racist stupidity on steroids and they do need corrective action.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT7vJFbFVCdAcX3byZQLJ2BZUWa2GV3zqFs2AbzhsCcQO7UIp6Qj5blYNY&s
Here is the entire infographic. When people point out that the chart was removed, I point out that the staff and management who created it remain. Personnel is ideology.
https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333
The terms “race” and “ethnicity” shouldn’t be used synonymously. For instance, if human races are regarded as “geoancestral” populations (which aren’t biological subspecies of homo sapiens), i.e. as continental, subcontinental, or insular native populations plus their descendants, then the sub-Saharan Africans may be called a race. However, they are a multiethnic race, i.e. one comprising many ethnicities (ethnic groups, ethnies). The African race is also multinational, so races aren’t nations either.
“There are few sensible pieces written on the topic of race”
Somewhat ironically, the NYT published an op-ed by David Reich that has some valuable information. The title is “How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race'”.
I would also recommend the work of N. Risch (mentioned above) and Dawkins, Collins, Frudakis, Kahn, and Hsu.
I think Reich’s NYT article came out in 2019 from memory and it is just as valid today. Probably moreso with more recent sequencing advances (See Sante Paabo (sp.) and his Nobel).
Differences in genetics are going to collide with the woke nonsense of the article above.
BTW – David Reich was on Dwakish Patel’s podcast a few months ago and I’ve watched it twice (it is long!)… worth the time.
best to you Frank,
D.A.
NYC
The Reich NYT op-ed is from 3/23/2018. I personally think the advances in AI are more important that the work of
Svante Pääbo. Of course, I am not criticizing the work of Svante Pääbo at all.
Interesting case, the Smithsonian. While the VP serves on the board, it is not defined as an executive branch agency nor under the Department of Interior, so in my understanding Trump is not the boss of it. In this case, how much weight does his EO hold?
As Kelce noted, the wokeness there has been extreme at times, so some correction is in order. I’m sure that poster was on the mind of either Trump or his advisors when his order was crafted. Assuming the EO holds, then that’s the risk that organizations run when pursuing divisive policies – someone with power over you might decide to push back.
There is actually a funny joke about all this. Quote
“Forensic anthropology and the concept of race: if races don’t exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them?”
Whilst Trump’s executive order may be an overcorrection, a correction needed to happen. Western culture and civilisation seems to be under a relentless barrage of criticism. A lot of which is ideologically driven, untrue, and divisive.
Regards slavery specifically, I think a healthy, true, and often inspiring narrative would be to acknowledge that yes, America engaged and that yes, it was wrong, but also that so did every civilisation on earth. What sets America and the West apart is that they abolished it and that whilst society may still not be perfect, plenty of progress has been made and continues to be made to that end.
And also that not every exhibit and museum and exhibition needs to be about this stuff!
The second part, regards race being a social construct, always begs the question to me that if true, why can a person not “change” their race like they can change their gender/sex. I know this point has been made before, but it really does show the twisted logic of many on the left. Post-modernism I suppose. Eye-roll.
If that were true we would not be able to make any kind of guess about about where in the world a person’s ancestors come from, and yet we can do so with fair accuracy. We may not like the word ‘race’ but even if we replace it with ‘genetic clusters’ they point at the same concept. I have no problem with saying that genetic clusters exist and may entail group differences, but that still doesn’t mean we can’t treat people as individuals with the same rights. Just as we (the sane amongst us) recognise there are two sexes but we should accord both the same rights. All this boils down to is that blank-slatism still survives. It never ends well when people choose to believe something that is not true for the sake of ideology.
The jeep ducks is something I’ve been noticing at our parking lot at work. Jeeps with several –> dozens of little rubber ducks on the dashboard. I wondered if it was some kind of cult